AFP News

Thousands of defiant pro-EU protesters in Georgia staged a fresh rally Friday after the prime minister claimed victory in a "battle" against the opposition, amid a deepening post-electoral crisis.

Like many others in the Syrian capital Damascus, student Shadi chose to stay home so he could keep up with the pace of events since rebels launched a shock offensive last week.

Iran plans a major increase in the production rate of highly enriched uranium, the UN nuclear watchdog said Friday in a confidential report seen by AFP. An updated design of Iran's Fordo plant showed that the effect of the change "would be to significantly increase the rate of production of uranium enriched up to 60 percent", the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report said.

President Joe Biden is considering preemptive pardons for several prominent names facing possible retribution from the incoming Trump administration, US media has reported.

Britain's Prince William and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky have joined a growing VIP guestlist for the reopening of Notre Dame cathedral on Saturday, with the latter expected to seek talks with US president-elect Donald Trump over Kyiv's faltering war effort.

TikTok faces a US ban after it lost an appeal on Friday against a law requiring the video-sharing app to divest from its Chinese parent company by January 19.

The image is particularly symbolic: A statue of former President Hafez al-Assad, the father of Syria's current ruler Bashar, was toppled in Hama after Islamist-led rebels overran the country's fourth-largest city, video authenticated by AFP showed.

The US economy added more jobs than expected last month, government data showed Friday, bouncing back from a dramatic slowdown triggered by hurricanes and labor strikes.

A former British soldier on Friday pleaded not guilty to murdering two men during the 1972 Bloody Sunday massacre, one of the most significant events in Northern Ireland's decades-long conflict.

Romania's constitutional court announced on Friday that it had annulled the presidential election following allegations of Russian interference, effectively cancelling the second-round run-off that had been due to take place this weekend.

The EU and four South American countries have concluded a huge, but controversial trade deal that is opposed by France and many European farmers, European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen announced on Friday.

A filmmaker accused of sexually assaulting French actor Adele Haenel when she was a minor goes on trial in Paris Monday, five years after her allegations fired France's #MeToo movement.

Lawmakers camping out in parliament, hundreds of thousands of protestors expected outside, a landmark vote to impeach the president over martial law -- South Korean democracy faces its "most critical moment", opposition leader Lee Jae-myung told AFP Friday.

Key figures in South Korea's failed martial law bid share one key connection: they are all graduates of a prestigious, all-boys school in Seoul.

Manila and Jakarta signed an agreement Friday to repatriate Mary Jane Veloso, a Filipina on death row for drug charges in Indonesia since 2015, with officials saying she could return to the Philippines before Christmas.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will meet leaders of South America's Mercosur bloc on Friday, aiming to push through a controversial pact to create the world's biggest free trade zone despite last-minute resistance.

Rebel forces pressing a lightning offensive in Syria aim to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad's rule, their Islamist leader said in an interview published on Friday.

In low-lying Copenhagen where rising sea levels, groundwater and rainfall pose a risk to infrastructure, the Danish capital is trying to adapt and protect urban areas from climate change.

In the Romanian village of Mihai Viteazu, where far-right presidential candidate Calin Georgescu performed particularly well in the first-round election in which he stormed to a surprise lead, businessman Ciprian Gavrila explained why.

Harrison Ford was de-aged last year for "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny" on the big screen, and video game makers are pulling the same trick for the whip-cracking hero's latest outing on the small screen.

Mask-wearing arsonists set a synagogue ablaze in a pre-dawn attack Friday in the Australian city of Melbourne, police said, sparking widespread condemnation.

Notre Dame's famed 8,000-pipe organ, known as the voice and soul of the beloved cathedral, will be "revived" after a five-year absence in one of the highlights of this weekend's reopening ceremony at the landmark.

Indonesian fruit seller Budi was seeking better prospects when he signed up for an IT job in Cambodia.

The World Bank announced Thursday that it has raised close to $24 billion to provide loans and grants for some of the world's poorest nations, which it can leverage to generate a record $100 billion in total spending power.

Asian markets mostly fell Friday at the end of a volatile week, with South Korean stocks and the won still under pressure with the president's job hanging by a thread as he faces impeachment.

Taiwan's largest coast guard patrol ship took part in a joint rescue drill in Palau on Friday, as visiting President Lai Ching-te fortifies ties in the Pacific where China has been poaching its allies.

President Emmanuel Macron on Friday was to hold talks with political factions as he seeks to name a new prime minister and find a way out of France's political crisis.

Europe's new Vega-C rocket launched Thursday from French Guiana and put a satellite into orbit in its first takeoff since a failed flight two years ago.